The Doomsday Industry: A Glorious Legacy of Being Spectacularly Wrong
The world of predictions is a magical place, one where highly credentialed people in expensive suits make wildly confident declarations about the future, and when they're wrong, they just pretend it never happened. It’s a business model so brazen, it makes used car salesmen look like monks.
I was born in 1964, the last gasping breath of the Boomer generation. I remember my dad spraying so much Dial deodorant into the air that the fog wouldn’t lift for five minutes. Imagine the horror when I found out in my Weekly Reader (you know that cool little periodical we got on Friday’s at school) my dad was actively burning a hole in the ozone layer. And if that dire news wasn’t bad enough, I learned that our cities would be underwater by 2020. The horror! Meanwhile we’d be fighting off rabid polar bears on makeshift rafts. Imagine my disappointment when the biggest crisis of 2020 turned out to be trying to figure out how I could buy and hoard toilet paper.
So, in the spirit of of that blazing doomsday introduction, let’s review some of the all-time greatest misses in the business of doom:
The Great Ozone Hole Scare
Remember when we were all going to be fried alive by UV rays because of our collective addiction to Aqua Net? They told us a gaping hole in the ozone was opening up like Satan’s mouth right above our heads, and unless we repented, we’d all look like leather handbags by 35. Well, turns out the ozone layer is like a self-healing reptile. Who knew? Certainly not the experts scaring us into rubbing zinc on our noses like 19th-century mimes.
Acid Rain: The Silent Killer That Wasn’t
In the ‘80s, we were told that acid rain was going to turn the entire Midwest into an apocalyptic wasteland, where cornfields would be reduced to skeletal husks, and people would dissolve on contact like sugar in coffee. I don’t know if you've been to Iowa lately, but it’s still there. And for that I am grateful. I love Iowa. It reminds me of the Meseta Plateau region in Spain. Side note regarding Iowa: whatever happened to Corn Nuts? Meanwhile, all those earnest PSAs warning us about deadly precipitation have aged about as well as your Blockbuster rental card. BTW, I have always wondered, is this where acid wash jeans came from?
Fossil Fuels: The ‘Any Day Now’ Shortage
Remember hearing we were gonna run out of fossil fuels. The experts were so sure of this that oil companies probably spent entire board meetings giggling behind their hands, thinking about how they’d get away with charging $10 a gallon for the last drops of crude. Yet here we are, still guzzling gas like a teenager at a soda fountain. If we’re running out, someone forgot to tell Saudi Arabia and every suburbanite driving an Escalade—because nothing says "fuel crisis" like a 6,000-pound luxury tank at the Whole Foods parking lot. I am not hating. I have an SUV.
Y2K: The Great Digital Apocalypse
Y2K—the great digital apocalypse that wasn’t. For years, tech "experts" warned us that when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, our computers would spontaneously combust, planes would drop from the sky, and ATMs would start dispensing Confederate currency. I remember being freaked that my beloved Waffle Iron wouldn’t work. Governments and corporations spent billions preparing for a disaster that ultimately amounted to…a few malfunctioning grocery store scanners and some confused doomsday preppers sitting in their bunkers, clutching canned potted meat and wondering why society hadn’t collapsed. It was the original "IT department crying wolf," proving that the only real catastrophe was the number of PowerPoint presentations wasted on hypothetical chaos.
The Melting Ice Caps: Waterworld 2020
Oh, the ice caps. They were supposed to be gone by now. Not shrinking, not struggling—but gone. They had the documentaries, the harrowing time-lapse photos, the grim-faced narrators warning us that our future would be a Kevin Costner film (no, not Field of Dreams). And didn’t climate scientist Al Gore claim that the Arctic ice could or would disappear as early as 2014 or extending to 2029? Yet, inconveniently, Antarctica is still stubbornly frozen, and climate models keep needing ‘adjustments.’
Net Neutrality: The Death of the Internet That Never Came
We were assured that if Net Neutrality was repealed, the internet would become a Mad Max-style wasteland, where only the rich could access Google, and the rest of us would be left to communicate via smoke signals and carrier pigeons. Yet somehow, I am still here, still able to Bob Vila's This Old House on YouTube and check in on whatever weird chaos is brewing over at Reddit.
The Overpopulation Panic
By 2000, they told us, we’d be eating each other because there wouldn’t be enough food. Instead, the biggest health crisis today is obesity. The real challenge isn’t scarcity—it’s figuring out how to convince people to stop deep-frying Snickers bars. I have not clue why this hit me but I have always wanted to deep fry a Snickers. And why not, I have tried its gateway drug—Funnel Cake.
Why Are They Always Wrong?
The answer is simple: Predictions aren’t about accuracy. They’re about attention. Whether it's a climate apocalypse, a tech catastrophe, or a financial doomsday, the goal is to get you to panic, click, donate, and comply.
Science is supposed to be a self-correcting process—hypothesis, testing, revision. But once a prediction makes its way into media hysteria, it becomes gospel. And when it turns out to be wildly off-base? Crickets. No accountability, no apologies, just a fresh new prediction about the next looming disaster.
Look, I’m not saying science is useless—far from it. But when some impeccably dressed fearmonger starts telling you they know exactly what’s going to happen, its time to do your own personal version of Timothy Leary—acid withstanding—turn on, tune in, drop out. The only thing history proves with certainty is that most predictions age worse than a gallon of milk left in the sun.
And don’t get me started on the investment world—where being spectacularly wrong is basically a job requirement. Next time Jim Cramer (or any other market pundit) is screaming at you about what to buy and what to sell, just do the George Costanza power move—go opposite. Believe me, it’s a proven winning strategy.
Where does this leave us? When someone insists the world is ending or catastrophe is just days away, just smile. Nod. Carry on. The future isn’t settled. It never has been. And if history is any guide, the next apocalypse prediction will be just as wrong as the last. Its usually just noise.
© 2025, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.
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